Fantastic Four: Whatever Happened to the Fantastic Four? (Comics) | Review

The current Fantastic Four run by Ryan North (Extreme Venomverse, One World Under Doom) has been a master-class balancing humor with genuine stakes. Whatever Happened to the Fantastic Four arrives as his thesis statement, a storyline asking what happens when the world's smartest family faces their most personal crisis.

This isn't another cosmic threat or dimensional invasion. The premise centers on separation, curses and what it means when heroes get torn apart by tragedy. North takes the team off the board entirely, scattering them across different nightmares while their home becomes a vortex.

The execution feels deliberate. Every issue builds tension through isolation rather than unity. You're watching each member struggle alone with impossible situations and the dread comes from knowing they can't reach each other no matter how desperately they try to reconnect.

Iban Coello (Venom: Absolute Carnage, Venom: The Abyss) handles art duties throughout this arc, bringing expressive character work that grounds emotional beats. His layouts emphasize negative space making absence feel tangible. When characters are missing, you feel the void on the page itself rather than just reading about it.

The opening issue drops you into a world where the Fantastic Four have disappeared without explanation. Not dead, not captured, just gone. The Baxter Building stands empty. Their enemies have moved on. The absence feels wrong in ways characters can't articulate.

North structures the mystery through fragmented perspectives showing where each member ended up. Ben and Alicia are trapped in a time loop inside a small town. Every day resets. They wake up, live through the same events, then reset with memories intact but no escape route.

Reed and Sue find themselves in another town facing endless waves of killer Doombots. The attacks never stop. They can't rest, can't strategize beyond survival. The mechanical assault feels designed to exhaust rather than kill, wearing them down through relentless pressure without offering up any clear pattern to exploit.

Johnny's situation hits differently. He's working incognito in New York City where the entire population suddenly hates him. Not just dislikes or distrusts but actively despises his presence. He can't understand why people who once cheered for him now want him gone completely.

The Baxter Building location now features a massive vortex where their headquarters used to stand. Something catastrophic happened in New York that triggered this separation. The government has seized all their assets. Their bank accounts are frozen. Everything they built together has been confiscated or just destroyed.

Franklin and Valeria are missing entirely. North uses their absence as emotional leverage. The parents can't protect their children. The children can't reach their parents. The family structure that defined the FF for decades has completely collapsed under pressure nobody saw coming.

As the mystery unfolds, you learn Nicholas Scratch engineered this entire nightmare. He's cursed the family with specific torments designed to break them individually. The time loop traps Ben's need for stability. The Doombot attacks exploit Reed and Sue's protective instincts. Johnny's isolation weaponizes his need for love.

The storyline explores how each member responds to separation differently. Ben uses repetition to search for escape routes. Reed analyzes patterns in Doombot attacks. Sue focuses on keeping Reed functional. Johnny struggles with identity when stripped of recognition.

Supporting character roles matter. Alicia experiences the time loop alongside Ben, providing perspective keeping him grounded. She notices details he misses. Her artistic observation becomes a survival tool when pattern recognition means finding what changes each loop.

The pacing moves deliberately through reveals that explain exactly how they got separated. North plants subtle clues showing Nicholas Scratch's long game. He didn't just attack once. He orchestrated specific situations that would force the Fantastic Four apart, then cursed them to stay separated through dark supernatural means.

The climax prioritizes reunion over defeating the villain. There's no reality-shaking battle. The stakes are intimate, focused on whether this family can navigate their individual nightmares and find paths back to each other. North trusts personal stakes matter more than cosmic ones.

Iban Coello's visual storytelling emphasizes isolation through panel composition. Ben's time loop features panels repeating with slight variations creating visual monotony. Reed and Sue's Doombot fights feature panels fragmenting into chaotic action denying breathing room.

His character work captures exhaustion and desperation without melodrama. You see Ben's frustration mounting through body language as the loop repeats. Reed's usual confidence erodes into something closer to panic. Sue's determination hardens into grim survival mode. Johnny's confusion reads like real identity crisis.

Jesus Aburtov handles colors with distinct palettes for each scenario. Ben's time loop uses warm, repetitive tones feeling artificially pleasant. Reed and Sue's Doombot gauntlet uses cold metallics. Johnny's New York scenes feature harsh lighting emphasizing his isolation visually.

North's dialogue balances humor with emotion. Characters crack jokes because that's how people cope with impossible situations, not because the story refuses taking itself seriously. Comedy never undercuts dramatic moments but makes beats land harder through contrast.

Whatever Happened to the Fantastic Four succeeds by isolating Marvel's first family and forcing them to fight back toward each other against impossible odds. North's run has consistently proven he understands these characters as family first and foremost. This arc delivers payoff for that approach through stakes that feel personal.

The storyline works best if you've followed North's broader run, though it's accessible enough for new readers. The emotional weight hits harder when you've seen how he's built these relationships. Still, the core mystery and character work stand alone through strong craft.

If you want traditional Fantastic Four adventures with dimension-hopping and reality-warping threats, this might disappoint but if you're interested in seeing Marvel's first family torn apart by curses and clawing back together, North delivers examination with intelligence and heart.